Napoleon's selection was tactful. At Naples, the eldest of the Bonapartes had effected many reforms and was generally popular; but the treachery of Bayonne blasted all hopes of his succeeding at Madrid. Though the grandees of Spain welcomed the new monarch with courtly grace, though Charles IV. gave him his blessing, though Ferdinand demeaned himself by advising his former subjects quietly to submit, the populace willed otherwise.
Every instinct of the Spanish nature was aflame with resentment. Loathing for Charles IV., his Queen, and their favourite, whom Napoleon richly dowered, love of the young King whom he falsely filched away, detestation of the French troops who outraged the rights of hospitality, and zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, whose chief had just been robbed of half his States, goaded the Spaniards to madness. Their indignation rumbled hoarsely for a time, like a volcano in labour, and then burst forth in an explosion of fury. The constitution which Napoleon presented to the Spanish Notables at Bayonne was accepted by them, only to be flung back with scorn by the people. The men of enlightenment who[pg.169] counselled prudence and patience were slain by raging mobs or sought safety in flight. The rising was at once national in its grand spontaneity and local in its intensity. Province after province rose in arms, except the north and centre, where 80,000 French troops held the patriots in check. In the van of the movement was the rugged little province of Asturias, long ago the forlorn hope of the Christians in their desperate conflicts with the Moors. Intrenched behind their mountains and proud of their ancient fame, the Asturians ventured on the sublime folly of declaring war against the ruler of the West and the lord of 900,000 warriors. Swiftly Galicia and Leon in the north repeated the challenge; while in the south, the fertile lands of Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia flashed back from their mountains the beacon lights of a national war. The former dislike of England was forgotten. The Juntas of Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia sent appeals to us for help, to which Canning generously responded; and, on July 4th, we passed at a single bound from war with the Spanish Bourbons to an informal alliance with the people of Spain.
Napoleon now began to see the magnitude of his error. Instead of gaining control over Spain and the Indies, he had changed long-suffering allies into irreconcilable foes. He prepared to conquer Spain. While Joseph was escorted to his new capital by a small army, Napoleon from Bayonne directed the operations of his generals. Holding the northern road from Bayonne to Burgos and Madrid, they were to send out cautious feelers against the bands of insurgents; for, as Napoleon wrote to Savary (July 13th): "In civil wars it is the important posts that must be held: one ought not to go everywhere." Weighty words, which his lieutenants in Spain were often to disregard! Bessières in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco; but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole campaign. Dupont, after beating the levies of Andalusia, penetrated into the heart of that great province, and, when cumbered with plunder, his divided forces were surrounded, cut off from their[pg.170] supplies, and forced to surrender at Baylen—in all about 20,000 men (July 19th). The news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an immense sensation in an age when Napoleon's troops were held to be invincible. Baylen was hailed everywhere by despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era. And such it was to be. If Valmy proclaimed the advent of militant democracy, the victory of Spaniards over one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals was felt to be an even greater portent. It ushered in the epoch of national resistance to the overweening claims of the Emperor of the West.
That truth he seems dimly to have surmised. His rage on hearing of the capitulation was at first too deep for words. Then he burst out: "Could I have expected that from Dupont, a man whom I loved, and was rearing up to become a Marshal? They say he had no other way to save the lives of his soldiers. Better, far better, to have died with arms in their hands. Their death would have been glorious: we should have avenged them. You can always supply the place of soldiers. Honour alone, when once lost, can never be regained."
Moreover, the material consequences were considerable. The Spaniards speedily threatened Madrid; and, on the advice of Savary, Joseph withdrew from his capital after a week's sojourn, and fell back hurriedly on the line of the Upper Ebro, where the French rallied for a second advance.
Their misfortunes did not end here. In the north-east the hardy Catalans had risen against the invaders, and by sheer pluck and audacity cooped them up in their ill-gotten strongholds of Barcelona and Figueras. The men of Arragon, too, never backward in upholding their ancient liberties, rallied to defend their capital Saragossa. Their rage was increased by the arrival of Palafox, who had escaped in disguise from the suite of Ferdinand at Bayonne, and brought news of the treachery there perpetrated. Beaten outside their ancient city, and unable to hold its crumbling walls against the French cannon and columns of assault, the defenders yet fiercely[pg.171] turned to bay amidst its narrow lanes and massive monasteries. There a novel warfare was waged. From street to street and house to house the fight eddied for days, the Arragonese opposing to French valour the stubborn devotion ever shown by the peoples of the peninsula in defence of their walled cities, and an enthusiasm kindled by the zeal of their monks and the heroism of the Maid of Saragossa. Finally, on August 10th, the noble city shook off the grip of the 15,000 assailants, who fell back to join Joseph's forces higher up the Ebro.
Even now the Emperor did not fully realize the serious nature of the war that was beginning. Despite Savary's warnings of the dangers to be faced in Spain, he persisted in thinking of it as an ordinary war that could be ended by good strategy and a few victories. He censured Joseph and Savary for giving up the line of the Upper Douro: he blamed them next for the evacuation of Tudela, and summed up the situation by stating that "all the Spanish forces are not able to overthrow 25,000 French in a reasonable position"—adding, with stinging satire: "In war men are nothing: it is a man who is everything."
When, at the close of August, Napoleon penned these memorable words in his palace of St. Cloud, he knew not that a man had arrived on the scene of action. At the beginning of that month, Sir Arthur Wellesley with a British force of 12,300 men landed at the mouth of the River Mondego, and, aided by Portuguese irregulars, began his march on Lisbon. This is not the place for a review of the character and career of our great warrior: in truth, a volume would be too short for the task. With fine poetic insight, Lord Tennyson has noted in his funeral Ode the qualities that enabled him to overcome the unexampled difficulties caused by our own incompetent Government and by jealous, exacting, and slipshod allies:
"Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good."[pg.172]
Glory and vexation were soon to be his. On the 17th he drove the French vanguard from Roliça; and when, four days later, Junot hurried up with all his force, the British inflicted on that presumptuous leader a signal defeat at Vimiero. So bad were Junot's tactics that his whole force would have been cut off from Torres Vedras, had not Wellesley's senior officer, Sir Harry Burrard, arrived just in time to take over the command and stop the pursuit. Thereupon Wellesley sarcastically exclaimed to his staff: "Gentlemen, nothing now remains to us but to go and shoot red-legged partridges." The peculiarities of our war administration were further seen in the supersession of Burrard by Sir Hew Dalrymple, whose chief title to fame is his signing of the Convention of Cintra.